If you thought the HK G11 was weird wait till you see what it looks like on the inside (VIDEOS)

By Chris Eger

The HK G11 is so exotic and complex, its internal workings have been described as amounting to “space magic.”
German gun giant Heckler & Koch worked on the innovative G11 platform throughout the 1970s and 80s in an effort to produce the West German army’s newest infantry rifle. Later proposed as part of the U.S. Army’s Advanced Combat Rifle program, the prototype used a complicated gas-operated rotary breech system to fire 4.7mm caseless ammunition at a blistering 2,100 rounds-per-minute when set to three-round burst.
The ACR program and its follow-on but equally ill-fated Objective Infantry Combat Weapon descendant burned through $300 million without producing a replacement for the military’s standard 5.56mm-chambered M16/M4 series rifles.
In all, precious few G11s were produced across several prototypes before HK closed the books on the project in the 1990s and most that remain in any form are museum pieces. That makes the recent score by The Armourer’s Bench’s Matthew Moss of an example ready for disassembly and inspection all the more interesting.
Just going to place this sneak peek here for reference to warn you of what to expect in the video:
G11 Breech & Barrel Assembly Diagram. As a warning, the gun contains over 440 parts! (Photo: Matthew